Orphan (typesetting)

In typesetting, an orphan is the first line of a paragraph appearing on its own at the bottom of a page, with the rest of the paragraph appearing on the following page. The converse situation, where the last line of a paragraph appears at the top of a page with the remainder appearing on the preceding page, is known as a widow.

In some situations orphans are considered to be 'bad' typography and should be suppressed. This is primarily when the typesetting style has a blank line above the paragraph, which will force the orphan to be a line alone surrounded by white space (hence the name). But if the text above the paragraph is set without space, orphans are allowed by most typesetters.

Some of the techniques for eliminating an unwanted orphan include:

forcing a page break early, producing a short page,
adjusting the leading (rhymes with "heading", meaning the space between lines) or the inter-paragraph spacing,
adjusting the tracking, or sometimes the word spacing to produce 'tighter' or 'looser' paragraphs,
subtly adjusting the page's margins,
subtle digital scaling of the page - either horizontally or vertically, or both - though too much non-uniform scaling can visibly distort the letters,
rewriting the paragraph.

Many typesetters have a trouble remembering the difference between orphans and widows, and it seems that the traditional distinction has become somewhat blurred over the years. However, traditionally, "orphan" refers to a line at the bottom of a page, "widow" to a line at the top of a page. Collins English Dictionary, for example, defines "orphan" in printing as "The first line of a paragraph separated from the rest of the paragraph by occurring at the foot of a page."

The easiest way to remember this is that "an orphan's future is uncertain" - in other words, you can't see what's going to happen in the rest of the paragraph. Also, an orphan is a paragraph left alone at the beginning of its life, while a widow is left alone at its end.

References

^* - TeX FAQ - Controlling widows and orphans, accessed March 16, 2006.
^* ("Widow and Orphan: A widow is the last line of a paragraph printed by itself at the top of a page. An orphan is the first line of a paragraph printed by itself at the bottom of a page.") - Microsoft TechNet, accessed March 16, 2006
Collins English Dictionary 6th edition. Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003. ISBN 0007109822

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